Phryne Fisher is bored. So when she is asked to investigate some strange goings-on in Farrell's Circus and Wild Beast Show, her curiosity gets the better of her. Stripped of her identity, wealth and privilege, Phryne takes a job as a trick-horse-rider, wearing hand-me-downs and a new name. But what connects the circus with the particularly nasty murder in Mrs Witherspoon's house for paying gentlefolk? Or with the warfare between rival gangs on Brunswick Street? Piecing together fragments from the seedy underworld of twenties Fitzroy and the eccentric life under the big top, Phryne proves her mettle yet again, aided only by her wits, an oddly attractive clown, and a stout and helpful bear.